Alex's Historical Fiction

Polar Fiction and car trouble

I've got a couple of polar fiction books on my list to track down:

Mrs Chippy's Last Expedition by Caroline Alexander. This is about the cat on Shackleton's Endurance trip. It will come to a bad end, that's for sure. Oh, and Mrs Chippy was actually a tomcat ...

The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge. Centres on the men in Scott's final polar party. Should be interesting.

These two are both in the local library. It's just a case of finding them, as at least one of them is a paperback, and I never have much luck finding pbs on those whiz-round carousel thingies.

Another one, which I tentatively call 'polar fiction' is:

Explorers of the New Century by Magnus Mills. Review from the Times here. This is an alternative history type thing, and I've actually bought it. The New Century referred to is the early 1900s, when all those British polar explorers were mucking about in the Antarctic ...

Meanwhile, Shackleton is being repeated on More4 (digital), so I am recording that.

Meanwhile on our street, to change the subject completely, we have a relatively new car phenomonen. Along with (S)crap Cars (there's one parked outside ours at this very moment), we now have the School of Stupid Parking. This is where some idiot decides to park on the opposite side of the road, on the foot path, and with cars parked on this side of the road at the same time. Result: pedestrians start complaining, and traffic can't get past very easily. And you should see the palaver when the Binmen and their large vehicles come. I believe the SSP has been started by a new resident, who doesn't know that the council have in the past issued warnings about cutting hedges so that people can pass, never mind cars parking on the pavement ... I found a note, obviously put on the windscreen of the SSP member, but either blown away or discarded so that it ended up entangled in my gate, telling them not to park on the pavement. I think it was actually from the householder outside where SSP had parked. I love this street :-)

Labels: Antarctic, Polar fiction

posted by Alex Bordessa @ Saturday, December 30, 2006